Five - Dynamising Kin Groups

Summary

Chapter 5 discusses methodologies for the analysis of social groups in ancient Egypt, addressing their benefits as well as their limitations. Anthropological study of kinship has usually been undertaken in living societies, but can also be tackled for cultures no longer existing Some methodologies used for social analysis in the past include the Lévi-Straussian notion of house societies, Social Network Analysis, prosopography, or sociography. The choice of method is reliant on the type of evidence that is available; in particular, the limited number of sources in ancient Egypt favours qualitative over quantitative analysis.

For that reason, I propose a model called koinography that combines suggestions from several of these approaches. It is based on the idea that social groups, and not individuals, should be treated as the preferred unit of social analysis, and that the factor of time is a fundamental tool to explore the position and role of that group in wider society. In particular, the model of the developmental cycle of the group originally proposed by Meyer Fortes has served as inspiration for the incorporation of a more dynamic and diachronic dimension into the study of ancient Egyptian groups.